Skyrim - What We're Working On - Updated

Bethsoft has updated their recent What We're Working On post on the Bethblog, responding specifically to criticism of the PS3 version. The takeaway for most of us is v1.3 is "in final testing":

Updated 12/6: While the 1.2 update fixed the long-term play issues for most PS3 users, we are aware that is not the case for some. Weíve been reaching out to a number of those users to collect save games, so we can take a look at their specific issues. Right now we know itís not one thing, but a combination of smaller ones that some folks are seeing, but others are not. Some seem to be the PS3 autosaving in the background (you can turn that off), some may be SPU AI updates, and some may relate to dynamic system memory allocation. These fixes are not in the current 1.3 update that is in final testing, but will be in future ones. We understand how frustrating it can be when your game is having issues, and we thank all of you for your continued feedback and patience. Rest assured we take your gameplay experience seriously and will continue working on this until itís resolved.

I wonder what modders can and can't do w.r.t. the UI? I can see how they could easily display more info, for example. But how configurable is the UI? I have never tried my hand at TES modding so I have no idea. What I really want is fully customizable hot-keyed dual combo weapons and spells. Also, the (unsorted!?) pulldown quick list fails as, well, a 'quick' list. Would be nice to have a something more flexible. The UI mod(s) I've seen do not seem to do this - or have I missed something? They seem to be more about presentation.

They have already said multiple times that only the renderer was rewritten and many of the other systems are updated versions of what they already had. The renderer is much better then it was in previous games but I hope next time they will redo some of the other systems.

There are already multiple UI mods like one that overhauls the inventory (QD Inventory) and one that adds a price relative to weight on the item card. There are some good font replacement mods also and I'm using 2 right now.

There are already multiple UI mods like one that overhauls the inventory (QD Inventory) and one that adds a price relative to weight on the item card. There are some good font replacement mods also and I'm using 2 right now.

But do they address the dual wielding hot-key issue or allow configuration of the quick list? The otherstuff is simply not that much of a bother for me.

As for the engine - the fact that ity was effectively FO3/FO3:NV, even to the extent of having the same kinds of LOD arrtifacts, was disappointing. The words 'new engine' were used way too much for what they eventually provided.

Originally Posted by guenthar
They have already said multiple times that only the renderer was rewritten and many of the other systems are updated versions of what they already had.

No. Quite the opposite: phrases "entirely new engine" and "completely rewritten" were often used. If they rephrased later, they have only confirmed talking crap earlier.

Regardless, the game (except the ui) is great, no real reasons for bitching.
As for the UI mods: QD inventory is currently the greatest (it's also the one displaying weight/value ratio), unfortunately it completely screws up enchanting UI.
The hotkeys: Oblivion had mods for that. But, until the tools are released, we cannot expect any "real" mods.

Originally Posted by booboo
I wonder what modders can and can't do w.r.t. the UI? I can see how they could easily display more info, for example.

Yes, there are already some minor UI mods done without the Construction Kit that do just that. I've seen a beta version of a UI mod that revises the inventory by putting a lot more items and info about those items on screen. Once it's finalized, I'll most likely install it. (Can't be bothered to dig up any links to it now. Check Beth forums.)

BTW, changing the UI font is a breeze. The original font was too futuristic and sterile to my taste, so I changed it.

Originally Posted by Daddy32
No. Quite the opposite: phrases "entirely new engine" and "completely rewritten" were often used. If they rephrased later, they have only confirmed talking crap earlier.
.

See, this is the type of stuff I remember them saying:

Spoiler

"Todd Howard: We have a team of about 100 people. We were doing some design during Fallout 3, but the real work started when we finished that game, with our tech staff moving over to work on the new technology for Skyrim.

We've always used a lot of our own stuff, mixed with other middleware that we liked. Coming off of Fallout 3, we made a pretty big list of what we wanted to change technically. So we redid the rendering, lighting, shadows, animation, faces, foliage, mountains, scripting, interface and more. And by the time we got through it all, it was clear the technology was new enough to give it its own name, The Creation Engine. Same with our editor, The Creation Kit. They go together as technology.

Some of that you'll notice as a player, like shadows, mountains, and the animations; some you won't, like how scripting or pathfinding works internally. If you looked quickly at our editor, it behaves similar to our old ones; it just does a lot more, and does some old things in better ways. But we don't change things just to change them. We still use the nif file format, because it worked fine for what we're doing and our modders know it well. We still use some middleware that we like, such as Havok. We're not just using their physics this time, but their animation system, Havok Behavior. It makes a dramatic difference in how the game looks and plays. Overall though, the paradigm for how we build these huge worlds has not changed dramatically, we just want it to look better and play more smoothly."

I remember a lot of articles using the phrase "completely rewritten from scratch" but that seems more to be bad reporting - which Tod Howard is clearly setting straight. They dropped a lot of the old middle ware and the things which were Gamebryo's technology provided with kits to developers and built on the tools and things they had created themselves. All the articles stating this though appear to be quoting Game Informer. I don't see Bethesda making quite such a statement and as far back as may Todd Howard gave a quite detailed explanation of what they had kept but modified of the things they had created themselves in developing previous games. If I'm just not finding it, please link me to it where they and not Game Informer are being sourced on that.

Also to be clear, it's not a specific section of the previous code base being carried would cause this while rewriting it would have somehow necessarily prevented this. The methodology is at fault when employed without particular attention payed to the more rigid allocation of 256mb RAM to non-rendering tasks. Except perhaps by happy accident, rewriting the code for this game function- even in ways which made it more computationally efficient - would have done nothing if the memory usage as a function of cumulative modifications was not addressed separately and specifically for the PS3.

Part of the problem was that's what Game Informer wrote in their own introduction to their scoop on the Creation Engine and that was the first thing a lot of people read about it. The other part of the problem is the misconception of what Gamebryo was and the attempts to explain that it was not being used got confused by that misconception getting inserted into the argument.

In the first week or so after launch I became so sick of hearing people say "see it still uses some of the same console codes and scripting methods, that means it still has pieces of Gamebryo in it." Nevermind that those elements were created by Bethesda and not Gamebryo. Never mind that incorperating them into the game no more makes them Gamebryo technology than putting groceries into a Hertz rental car makes your groceries part of the rental car or the property of Hertz. There was also the common "this bug happened in the previous games and that proves this is just an updated Gamebryro, wibble."

My favorite was "See, it still uses nifs - that requires a process patent formerly owned by NDL and now by NDTs lending/holding company and that means this is just updated Gamebryo." Any attempt, even a cursory and lazy one, would have immediately dispelled this notion. It would reveal that no such fundamental patent was ever applied for nor was one granted. It would also have revealed - via either the open-source projects related to nif format or through google's very helpful patent search feature - that third parties have regiestred numerous patents for processes relating to their own systems which utilized the nif format an specifically referenced Gamebryo as unpatented prior art.

That means that you can copyright your own code which makes use of this format - as long as it does not infringe on those other patents. This does require you to wholly write this code yourself. Its because of this that things like "it uses nifs" don't prove that it is "just updated gamebryo" but rather only because all things that were previously done by Gamebryo in their games are now done by new code entirely written by Bethesda that they are able to continue to utilize nif format. The renderer and core engine provided by Gamebryo has to be gone because although there are no patents on the fundamental processes they use, that previous code was copyrighted.

This is a high level design issue, not a simple coding issue. It may not have required a complete reworking of the high level design but it would have had to have been realized at that stage for this to be a simple matter to fix. They rewrote quite a bit of the code - all of the Gamebryo code which was the bare minimum, replaced speedtree with their own system and other third party plugins they used with Gamebryo with newer versions or alternatives. They rewrote more than they thought they would. This problem is not about what code was rewritten but what basic methods were rethought.

I'm putting this in spoiler tags because it was supposed to be a short analogy and turned into a ridiculous story.

It's a big mistake mind you and its an important lesson that to developers used to developing on the PC. It's not the result of a lie but its not something that they shouldn't have worked harder to figure out at the initial high-level design stage. They, like so many forum posters and game journalists, probably just assumed it was a code issue specific to Gamebryo. In this presumption they failed to consider that such a fundamental methodology they've used variations of since 1997 might run into situations where the PS3's particular and more rigid limits on RAM allocation could be the cause of the problem (not even just generally the total amount of shared RAM.)

Spoiler –

"Thinking it like buying dental products for your kids. Maybe your first kid, we'll give them the random name Pierre Cedric, had perfectly straight and strong teeth but got the occasional cavity because they were kind "special" and you had to scream at them and beat them with a nerf bat to get them to actually brush - and maybe sometimes you'd just rather drink some scotch and go to sleep. You wouldn't think anything was wrong with the toothbrushes or toothpaste though, but you might not be the most attentive of parents.

Say you pick up a second kid at Walmart, with the unforutnate name Xander Bock, because they offered a really great deal. They've got kind of crooked teeth so they'll probably have a harder time brushing, but they're a lot more obedient and tend to do as they're told. You'd still probably not think you'd have a reason for changing the dental products you usually bought. You also value the time with your scotch a little more and might have to divide your attention a little - which will make your first kid a little jealous but it turns out they're a savant at hand carving their own dentures so they'll probably be able to make up for things themselves after a fashion.

Then you get your third kid - a somewhat awkward but pretty healthy and usually well behaved adopted child from overseas. They don't act out just like your second kid and they seem to know a lot of things your other kids don't. Unfortunately you're not quite fluent in their language and maybe have a bit of a vocabulary issues, but you thnk you'll managed because unlike your first kid they do whatever they're told (mostly) and are pretty predictable and brush dillgently every night with the new and somewhat improved toothpaste formula you bought. After a few months though their's a horrible rotting smell coming from their mouth and they seem to have inexplicable pain in their face somewhere.

You realize you can't abide this - the screaming is really getting in the way of you scotch time - and so hire some mechanical engineers and set out to design a superior toothbrush. It uses a powerful electric rotor that wrecks havoc on plaque and bacteria - destroying them with the power and sometimes odd behavior of physics. Overall this brush looks better, sounds better, and can do a lot more than that previous Dental-Bro bargain brush you were buying. You even start using a better and also prettier toothpaste; which is a strange thing to care about in toothpaste I suppose but I'm getting sick of this overwrought metaphor turned allegory. Two months more pass and this kid is bleeding from the mouth, glaring at you, and keeps saying some word you hadn't quite picked up yet.

Then your eccentric but sometimes brilliant neighbor stops by. He's the father of a famous writer and an accomplished author himself but when his son (Mack Giles) was killed murdered by the recently suicidal and increasingly deranged pawn shop owner, I'll just go ahead and call them Interplay (they don't deserve a lazy psuedonym), he went a little goofy himself. He always goes around and asks if he can have people's old toothbrushes for which they have a cunning and ambitious plan, lets call him Odd Ian.

A couple of times you saw him use a mostly broken toothbrush that looked like it could have been a decade old to save a buses full of inncocent and precious bikini models from roving gangs of terrifying stray orphans. Other times he just pokes people with someone else's used toothbrush. You could say his edevours lack consistency. He takes one look at your kid and looks at you like you're the crazy one and says "Didn't you notice they have braces? They needed to floss but now they'll need dentures.

If you read that then you'll understand when I say claiming the engine is the same or not rewritten is like accusing the brilliant parent in the story of not using different toothpaste. Instead you should yell at them for not looking their adopted kid in the mouth; since new platforms and children are neither gifts nor anything approaching the usefulness of a horse it is perfectly fine to do this.

PS. The very first article where they mention rewriting the "engine" they specifically said the "graphics engine" which is pretty much what jhwisner quoted above except for animations since they used Havok for that instead of wtiting their own.

jhwisner, that was quite a story
Now, I have to agree, it was most likely bad journalism and not Bethesda themselves claiming they made the completely new engine.
But still, as a programmer myself, I find it highly unlikely that bugs (except maybe memory allocation problems) get transferred to the new, rewritten code. Most bugs happen to be pretty low-level and not a results of an high-level design decisions taken during the software life-cycle. So, while same console commands or same file-structure may be re-implemented on purpose, bugs are pretty good indicator of old code.
But as you said, Bethesda didn't seem to use those bombastic phrases, so their shield is clean.